There Were Only 33 FCC Complaints About The Super Bowl Halftime Show This Year

(Yahoo) - The halftime show garnered just 33 complaints to the FCC, according to documents obtained by The Hill as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

In 2020, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira's co-headlining medley prompted a staggering 1,300 protests to the FCC. A year earlier, Maroon 5's performance at the NFL championship game drew about 50 complaints.

But some of the viewers who objected to Dr. Dre's extravaganza made mention of the most high-profile and controversial halftime production of all: Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's 2004 performance. More than 540,000 complaints poured into the FCC when Jackson suffered an infamous "wardrobe malfunction" and her breast was exposed, leading to a $550,000 fine for CBS and MTV, which was eventually dismissed.

One Super Bowl LVI viewer who called 50 Cent's appearance "trash" that included "slutty looking women dancing near stripper poles," defended Jackson in their note to the FCC. "Janet Jackson performance was 1,000 times better and 100 percent not her fault," the Chicago viewer said. "Glad Justin Timberlake wasn't invited to the Super Bowl to this year's show."

These numbers are going around and people are viewing this as a huge win for society as a whole, but not me. Numbers are down by over a thousand from a few years ago when Shakira and J-Lo were shaking their asses like the world was about to end. To be fair to both of those women - they were correct. The saw the writing on the wall and shook harder than anyone has ever shook before.

But the reason I don't view this as a huge victory is that there are still 33 assholes out there. 33 people who genuinely believe their opinion about the largest show in television history simply must be heard and acknowledged. And of course, we all have opinions about things that happen every day, we express them on our own social media accounts and whoever wants to suffer and follow along is more than welcome to do so. That's not the same as picking up the phone and calling the FCC to lobby an official complaint about the goings on happening on the moving picture box. I don't want the government to keep lists of peoples' names but since we know that's exactly what they do I hope these 33 people are on a list. The goal of this list is for when the Earth succumbs and the last rockets are headed to Mars the relatives of these sociopaths don't get those last seats.